


Doc and Mabel

by gardnerhill



Series: A Fiend in Feline Form [3]
Category: Basil of Baker Street - All Media Types, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Animals, Cats, Community: watsons_woes, M/M, Mice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-01-26 07:56:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1680638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sequel, of sorts, to last year’s JWP 2013 entry, “<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/866372">The Hidden Paw</a>.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2014 JWP Practice Prompt: **Cliffhanger!**
> 
>  **Warning:** Violence against animals. Mouse-POV attitudes about cats.

I saw the cat; he didn’t see me. Of course I saw him – I’m a mouse that’s survived to adulthood in a city teeming with the beasts, aren’t I? I gave the feline the berth he required, staying downwind and out of earshot; the tom did not twitch a whisker as I crossed the alley at the far end.

I did not loiter, for I had my patients to see to – young Timothy and his bad cough, old Penrose’s gout, poor blind feverish Violet who was surely not long for this world, Mrs. Barret who would soon have her pups. A doctor is well run off his paws in London.

Others shared the city streets with me; humans and horses on the great wide roads, dogs and cats, rats and mice on our own byways, pigeons and starlings where they would. The little fierce dogs and the cats posed the greatest personal threats; I also watched for crows, carriage wheels and great horse-hooves, the stomp of humans’ shoes and boots. I was quick and I was stealthy. So long as I make my medical rounds – even more than those occasions when I happily join my companion Basil in rooting out a mystery – my Army training will never wither for lack of practise. My poor friend pretends to be nonchalant about the perils of my work, but he holds me a little tighter on those days upon my return.

At a high-pitched cacophony of mews clustered on a pile of rubbish near another alleyway’s entrance I dashed the final feet, heart in my mouth. Then I was safe in Timothy’s hole in the wallboards of a clapboard shanty, without the horrid kittens or their she-devil mother catching wind of me. Hideous creatures, cats! (I have no quarrel with the roles Divine Providence has laid out for all the creatures of Her good earth – but whilst other natural-law-abiding predators kill only for the sake of feeding themselves and their young, and villains of every people exist to work mischief and mayhem on their fellows, cats, like humans and some dog species, will largely kill solely for the pleasure of the thing, or to indulge in cruelty.)

Timothy’s large family teemed in that cramped, miserable hole – little more than a crack – and most were anxiously clustered around the whisp of dirty straw where my patient lay and where his anxious mother sat knitting. “Jolly neighbors you have, lad,” I said heartily, to give the sickly young mouse a feeble laugh. “We must do what we can so that you can run errands for Mr. Basil once again. Is the syrup working, ma’am?”

I went through the motions and said all the right things to the family, but in my heart I knew the dire situation would not be alleviated with a dose or two. What the lad truly needed – what the family needed – was fresh air, decent food, escape from their murderous neighbors. A move to the park would be ideal, and as impossible as suggesting they all go to the Moon. I knew what garment his mother was knitting, and she would finish it just in time. I did what I could, and left that home with no less caution for the nursing queen-cat and her brood who would soon make short work of the rest of the family unless things looked up. But the poor lad slept more comfortably after the draught I’d given him, and the family’s gratitude for even that little bit of doctoring was humbling.

My next patient was a good deal easier on my heart; I dodged the horses in the costly townhouse’s carriage-yard to enter the wainscoting of the lavishly-furnished mouse-hole.

I heard my patient’s profane bellow before I saw him. “Damme, Dawson my boy, you’re damnably late! Both of ‘em are giving me gyp. Out with the nostrums, Major – double-quick!”

I laughed even as I opened my bag. “Good morning, Colonel!”

The enormous old mouse grunted, clearly in pain he tried to hide (though the bandages around his grossly swollen lower paws told the truth). “Hmph! Only just morning. Did you bloody sleepwalk here, soldier? I’d have had you flogged for that in my old unit.”

“My apologies, Colonel. I had a small cat problem on the way.”

“Hmph! Damned creatures, cats. Almost as bad as the damned stoats we beat back in ’58 – bored you with that tale a few times, haven’t I? You’ll be famished, I shouldn’t wonder. Oh pooh, don’t deny it lad. I’ll have Else fix you something for afterward.” The great fat old mouse rang a bell.

I changed Colonel Penrose’s dressings, gave him a tincture, left him another bottle of pills and collected my fee before sitting to a well-appreciated salad and cuppa in the kitchen before leaving the manse.

Such was life in London; wealth whisker-by-jaw with poverty. It seemed oddly balanced that one as prosperous as old Penrose should suffer just as much in his affluence as pauper Timothy in his privation.

I made my way to the park, but as I approached Violet’s burrow I was met by a great burly rabbit – Jacks, Violet’s mate this season. “Don’t need you no more, mouse doc,” he said, looming over me and running a paw over one ear. “She left her burrow last night.”

My heart sank. Myxomatosis is as foul as the Black Death that struck down half of London’s rat population twice in our history. Violet must have felt her death coming and, true to her lagomorphic species, had taken herself away to die apart from everyone. “You stayed well away – you and the others.”

“Oh aye, we’re no fools. I only went the once, day or two past, to bring her an apple core. She wouldn’t eat.” Jacks shook his ears and scratched them hard, which sent a chill down my spine. Myxo is spread by rabbits’ ear-fleas. Again, no cure; only to make the patients comfortable.

I could only nod heavily. “A shame.”

“Aye, mouse doc, she was all right.” Jacks scratched his ears again.

“Jacks?” I hated to do it, but he had to know. “I think, perhaps…you should use Violet’s burrow. And stay away from the others.”

“What, this? Oh, no it’s just an itch is all! Just an itch!” Jacks stopped. He scratched his ears hard again. And again. “Ballocks,” he said softly. “I’ll go blind and get those spots, won’t I?”

“I’ll come back in two days,” I said. “If you aren’t feverish, you’re safe.”

“And if I’m sick?” Jacks whispered. He scratched again.

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Bloody little, mouse doc,” Jacks snapped. “Don’t come back. We die alone!”

I nodded. He had his lapine pride. “If you’re ill I won’t return. I’m sorry I couldn’t help Violet. See you later, Jacks.”

After the day I’d had, my visit to the expecting Ethel Barret was refreshingly banal. She was a healthy young mouse, well-fed and ensconced in a neat little hole in an up-and-coming neighborhood, and would in all probability pup without incident. Most of my visit was simply to reassure her worried husband Bill on that account.

“I’ve been having these terrible dreams, Doctor,” she continued a one-sided conversation whilst I used my stethoscope to let her enthralled mate hear the half-dozen heartbeats in his wife’s belly. “The babies are born eyes-open and furry, like those nasty foreign guinea pigs!”

“Dear, I work with a guinea pig, they’re very nice,” Bill protested.

“Do you think that means something? Is it a portent of ill fortune?” she continued as if she hadn’t heard.

“Dreams of harm coming to the babies are very common in this stage of pregnancy, Mrs. Barret,” I reassured both. “Perhaps it is the way your unconscious mind’s worry for your pups expresses itself.”

“Unconscious mind? What rot!” she scoffed. “Doctor, surely you don’t believe in that German gerbil quackery!”

“Psychoanalysis is not quackery, Mrs. Barret,” I countered. “Perhaps not all of it is useful, but many aspects of that field –”

“Nonsense! My best friend, Mrs. Carter, is having my tea leaves read this Wednesday and she’ll have an answer for me even if you don’t!” Mrs. Barret flopped back onto her bed, the very emblem of patient suffering. “William, this ordeal is beyond my ability to describe! Lord knows how I endure!”

“Yes, dear,” Bill said, and patted her paw. He was young, but already a wise and excellent husband. I pitied him even as I understood her fear, but knew that once the litter came both would be too busy caring for their thriving brood to worry. It was a good problem to have.

Leaving Mrs. Barret with a phial of lavender oil and Mr. Barret with instructions to massage his wife’s swollen belly with it, I left that home and turned my face to home, exhausted from the chatter.

A hot bath, I thought longingly, heading along the cobbles toward the nearest cab pointed toward Baker Street. A good strong cup of Mrs Judson’s tea. And then the good strong arms of my mate, who would deduce my entire day and know what I needed.

I saw and heard other cats, rats, avoided a starling fight. My instincts had not deserted me though I was emotionally worn and physically tired from my rounds. So when the enormous paw came down across my back the only thought that went through my mind was This one’s good – before I was pinned, with the kind of weight behind it that could only mean one creature.

“An assassination, Dr. Dawson,” the cool voice of the queen-cat purred in my ear. “My client wishes it. That is all you need to know.”

Of all the reactions this mouse-killer had expected from her terrified prey, I am sure she was not ready for mine.

“Goddammit!” I roared. “Hasn’t there been _enough_ death today?”  



	2. Chapter 2

My outburst threw my assailant. I felt the paw’s terrible crushing weight lift, just a little. Just for a fraction of a second.

 

Just enough for a soldier’s reflexes.

 

I wriggled out and fled, letting out a squeak of pain as three lines of fire raked down my back. But I am a mouse. I was up the nearest brick wall and did not stop till I was twice the length of a cat’s body up the vertical pitch, clinging to the rough mortar niche.

 

Two white paws thumped the bricks below me, and for a second I looked my attacker full in the face. To this day that face wakes me in the night. The cat was not enraged, did not snarl or hiss; that would have been easier to bear. It was silent, still-faced, with calm glittering green eyes, and she looked at me only as something already dead. Gravity dropped her to earth again, but she never took her assassin’s eyes off me.

 

Terror overwhelmed my physical pain. This was no mere hungry cat taking advantage of a random meal - she’d targeted me, and would not stop until one of us was dead. I swallowed pain and panic. Stay still. Assess the enemy. You have the high ground for now. Ignore the pain and the warm trickle down your back.

 

“Dr. Dawson.” She did not hiss or snarl or spit; her voice was the level tone of a business transaction. “You will do better to come down now and let me kill you quickly, instead of waiting for my next strike and being afraid. You are to die. You will not see or hear me, just as you did not just now.”

 

“Your client,” I gasped, shaking. The pain in my back was catching up to me. Who could want me dead? I couldn’t think. “Who is your client?”

 

The insufferable creature sat and washed one paw in silence, never breaking eye contact.

 

Basil. How would Basil read her? Think, Dawson. Observe, and deduce. Forget your damn back. Think!

 

I closed my eyes, and reopened them.

 

Queen, approximately four to five years of age. Sleek and well-fed; no sign of scratching for ear-mites, no ticks in the fur, no gauntness – so not a stray cat, a pet cat. A sinuous killing machine as are all cats, but with a way of sitting that called to mind my own service, and a stillness that spoke of discipline – that spoke of Army training. Soundless and scentless as a ghost – she could have been special forces for whatever unholy wars cats waged among their own kind, possibly as part of an elite team of mousers or ratters for (and my gorge rose at the thought) provisioning duty. No extraneous words, no boasting; this one expected orders to be followed without bluster and bravado, and followed orders in like fashion. A high rank then – lieutenant colonel or colonel.

 

She had her orders and she had all the power for now. I understood that even as I loathed her.

 

She continued in her level, reasonable, hateful voice. “Let go and die like a soldier. There is no shame in it.”

 

“I’ve seen enough death today, thank you,” I snapped. “If I can prevent a death, I will do so.”

 

The cat continued to look at me. “Then your choice, Doctor. Either we settle this business now, or you find Basil’s body on your doorstep when you go home. He will not see or hear me, either.”

 

I made myself laugh contemptuously even as my heart chilled. “No beast in London, on four legs or two, can best Basil of Baker Street. Threaten him all you like. Colonel.”

 

Her ears flickered for a split-second, as if she fought the urge to lay them flat against her skull in anger or fear; her fangs bared for the same split-second. Good; that was the second time I’d surprised her. And I was right. I am not Basil, but an old Army campaigner can recognise the signs.

 

Doorstep. Doorstep. Her instant attempt to use my affection for Basil as leverage cleared some of the pain-fog from my brain. So that was why she was after me – the end game was Basil. Her original orders must have been to leave my corpse at Baker Street for Basil to find. Now it made sense – and some villain with more brains, wealth and power than the usual lot was behind this.

 

This chill was not caused by pain and blood-loss. This one knew about us – not merely of the famous detective Basil of Baker Street, but knew of the pair of us – knew we were close friends, possibly even knew of the truest definition of our bond. Someone with resources understood that a murderous cat or a few heavily-armed weasels could break Basil’s bones or leave bruises, but that my death would destroy him.

 

I held still, willing every reaction to hide. This meant … that that villain did NOT want Basil dead, despite the cat’s bluff – would indeed be furious if this killer queen made good on her threat. I had leverage.

“Defend your friend all you like,” she said, and now there was just a hint of passion in the voice that had been so level. The word “friend” she stressed with feline incomprehension at its meaning – cats are the most solitary of beasts. “Basil of Baker Street may be your hero, Dr. Dawson, but he is only another mouse. He will not see or hear me strike, any more than you did.”

I stopped myself from retorting that if I, Dr. Dawson, could free myself from an elite mouser, what hope had she to corner a far cleverer and more perceptive member of our species? Why, I could disappear into this building and make my way back to Baker Street to an alive and well Basil, sure that she was bluffing.

… And if I did that, I would live in terror of ever leaving our hole again lest the hidden paw strike me down. I would become a fearful prisoner in my own home. Basil would be unprotected in his work, unguarded, bereft of my input or use as a sounding-board at the crime scene. My patients needed me – I had to attend to Mrs. Barret’s coming litter and old Penrose’s gout, and at least ensure that Timothy and Jacks died as comfortably as possible. Meantime, what innocents would feel this assassin’s wrath to wound Basil’s heart – Mrs. Judson, little Billy the page, the ragged young street-rats who ran his errands and who adored him?

My back pain did wonders to sharpen my thoughts – that with the fear-blood pumping through me. This whipped through my pain-striped thoughts:

 

-          Say nothing of this, not even to taunt her.

-          They know about us, then, by reputation, this “client” and the assassin. How? My stories, other animals’ gossip, hearsay.

-          What do they know of me? In my writings, only a helpless oaf compared to the brilliant Basil; a scarred Army mouse content to scamper behind the detective and take his notes and express astonishment at his conclusions. From the eyewitness accounts of our clients, a mouse not blessed overmuch with brains, but fiercely loyal to Basil.

-          In other words, the sort of fellow who’d be completely taken in by this queen’s threat to my friend.

-          I was gun-fodder for this client’s battle, nothing more – and considered nothing more. Basil’s pet fool, whose loss was strictly to gain upper paw on my friend.

-          Time to act, Dawson. Act.

 

“No,” I said angrily – but made sure my voice quavered just a bit. “No, that mustn’t happen!” I whipped my tail back and forth once, the agitation of terrified prey.

 

Ah, I did not imagine that smug glow in her soulless green eyes at the tail-whip – surely a familiar sight to such a confident mouse-hunter. The scent of my blood stretched her mouth wide in a deathly grin. “Come down, Doctor,” she practically purred. “Come down and die for your commander, and Basil remains untouched. Or go home, and find his body. Your choice.”

 

“Basil,” I made myself whimper. “You mustn’t. You mustn’t.” Alas, I did not need to feign shaking all over – my claw-wounds were serious and would indeed bring death if untreated much longer, and I was made of fear. And down I came, by half a brick.

 

“It’s all right, Doctor.” The kindness in her voice was a balm to my fear. I tightened my reserve and remembered it was all sham. She was very good; that comforting voice must have charmed half her wounded, frightened victims straight into her mouth. “It will be all over very soon. This will save Basil. You’ve saved him.”

 

I climbed down, gasping for breath as if sobbing. “Yes. Yes.”

 

Almost at the site where her claws had landed on the wall. I froze, just above it, and shook.

 

Ah there – a tail-wave from the cat before it went still. “Come down,” her false, kind voice purred. But that tail-wave spoke the truth – I’d angered her. She was angry – angry at having been thwarted from her first strike, angry that I’d called her rank. She’d expected an easier kill than I’d turned out to be, and my responses were throwing her off her sure-footed work.

 

“Please.” Not too pleading – keep your Army pride in the voice, soldier to soldier. “Please, Colonel. Promise that you will … leave Basil alone.”

 

Her mocking tone poorly hid her anger. “Why, Doctor, didn’t you just swear to me that no-one in London, four-legged or two-legged, could best Basil of Baker Street? Where is your certainty now?”

 

Cats loathe sentiment, it has no place in their lives, they don’t understand it. Friendship, love, they’re foreign disgusting things to them. “Just ... promise that my friend will be safe from you! He’ll be so lost without me! Promise me, Colonel!” Now I cried that out with my true fear.

 

“I promise nothing if you’re not dead within the minute, mouse!” she snarled. That rage was white hot steel ready for the forge. Just a twitch of the cat’s tail-tip, bristled; she was furious. She didn’t dare let me go, or her reputation was ruined. And no clean blow now, this assassination – she’d tear me limb from limb for this. “Down. Here. _Now_.”

 

Such a powerful drama that meant nothing to the big people all around us! Just outside this little bit of alley, humans clopped by in their horse-drawn cabs and carriages, walked home, chatted, smoked. If they were to glimpse us, all they’d see was a sweet little pussy-cat playing with a hurt mouse.

 

Time it. Time it so carefully.

 

Shuddering, I stiffened as if facing an execution squad. I let myself down the body-length that put me in reach.

 

And when the cat pounced upward, fury and impatience overwhelming her assassin’s calm, I let go and dropped between her paws. I was on the ground in the moment that the queen struck the wall just where I had been. Another second before she once again hit the ground and spun to catch me.

I dashed – not for safety, but for my bag. Open, find it (no hurry half a second left), seize.

 

I whirled around and flung my flenser straight into the nearest green eye even as the snarling tiger-tabby loomed over me, mouth open.

 

I stared straight down her gullet as she screeched – the first cat-like yowl she had given, so close I could have walked down her throat. I shall not give description of the wound I made; that, and the creature’s screaming, provides fodder for other nightmares.

  
But my own cold battle-rage had overcome my natural need to flee; my heart was made of ice. With a squeal of my own rage, I raced up the one-eyed tabby’s foreleg, sinking my teeth into the nearest ear.

 

She tore away, howling in pain, with me clinging to her fur. She slammed into the alley wall, trying to scrape me off. I tore at the other ear, and she dashed out of the alley, trying to flee my teeth – for I was approaching her remaining eye.

 

Hubris, anger, temper, pain, and panic. They are a poor combination, especially on these wide, busy London streets. I could not have timed the nearest hansom cab’s approach better than if I’d ordered it.

 

The mare shied at the panicked, pain-maddened cat with its bizarre rider under her very hooves – no self-respecting horse will trample anything living if it can prevent it – but the dumb iron-shod wheels behind her hooves were no such respecter of niceties. I leaped away and dashed between the mare’s legs, and heard the thump just as pain stabbed at my very tail-tip – the other wheel had caught me that much. I fled to the kerb and safety.

 

Shouts as the human driver calmed the prancing mare. A human man’s curse from inside the cab. A cry of distress from a human child on the walkway.

 

I shuddered and shook in that gutter, bleeding and torn, spattered with cat’s blood and ocular effluvia, my tail-tip a ruin, my doctor’s bag lost. But I watched as that cab went on – and only relaxed when I saw my would-be assassin’s lifeless body where the wheels had passed. Grimly, I rested and groomed my wounded back as best I could, and saw several other wheeled vehicles confirm my kill in the interim.

 

“Doctor Dawson! Lor bless me, is that you?”

 

I looked up (when had I lain down? I was so tired) to see several anxious whiskery faces peering at me over the kerb. They’d clearly been drawn to the hubbub and would have been thrilled to see the results. “Hello, girls,” I said weakly, recognizing the young rats. “Bit of … bother with a cat. ‘S over now.”

 

“Should say it’s over, she’s nobody’s moggy now,” guffawed Jennie Tilson, one of the ragamuffins who were Basil’s eyes and ears on London streets. “Blimey, she didn’t half-eat you, Doc, it’s a wonder you’re still breathing.”

 

“Please,” I whispered; I was rapidly losing consciousness, and if I slept before arranging help I was dead. “Could one of you… carry me home?”

 

One thing I dearly love about rats, when they are on our side: They are so much bigger and stronger than mice.

 

***

 

“My dear fellow.”

 

I turned my head toward that warm, beloved voice as if toward the sun.

 

The voice continued, affection given sound. “Macavity will be furious with you over this. Colonel Mabel was the deadliest mouser in London.”

 

Macavity. The name meant nothing to me. I let it drop. He would explain later; he was very fond of explaining things to me.

 

I ached, all over; I was as weak as a newborn pup; I was swathed in bandages; and I lived. I smelled everything that meant home and safety to me – tea, broth, tweed, tallow, carbolic, tobacco, and the dear mousey smell that marks a good snug burrow, a solid home.

 

“But if you ever again attempt to frighten me to death, Doctor, I shall never forgive you.”

 

I smiled, for that warm voice completely belied the stern words. “Won’t fright’ you t’ death,” I said (Gad, my voice was so thin). “Not while I’m here.” I really ought to open my eyes but it was too much work at the moment.

 

“So I see.” Now that even voice had a quaver in it. “And how fortunate I am, to be friends with a mouse who kills cats in my defence.”

 

“Nunh.” So he’d deduced everything – no doubt in one appalled look at my torn body – but had gotten one bit wrong. “Din’t kill. Cab did.” Even if I had cold-bloodedly driven the pain-maddened beast into traffic for precisely that purpose.

 

I finally forced my eyes open, to the sweetest sight a mouse in love can behold: the bright eyes of his life-mate shining with pride and love returned with compound interest. Basil was in his shirt-sleeves and was a good deal rumpled, which either meant that he hadn’t had a case for several days or that the poor fellow had been nursemaiding me himself – and likely both.

 

Basil attempted a return of his usual careless tone when speaking to me, but a mole could have seen through his lie. “As for that, I’m afraid that’s past remedying, old boy.” He busied himself with the bandages and tinctures on the table. “I have no doubt Jennie and Harry and the rest of the Baker Street Whiskers are telling their chums about Catkiller Dawson even as we speak. Rats love a good story with a brave hero. By the time you’re well enough to return to your rounds, you will have slaughtered half the felines in Cheapside, and the other half flee mewing in terror at your glare.” This last laughed out of him.

 

“Don’t, you sod, it hurts to laugh,” I huffed painfully at the pull from my bandaged back. Pain and all, my heart was lightened at his words _return to your rounds_ – he would not let his fear for my life keep me from my practise, any more than I would let my own fear keep me from my work, either with my patients or at Basil’s side. Indeed, had he not just received proof that it took more than a murderous cat to stop me?

 

“That really was too bad of me, my dear,” Basil continued, laughing in relief as much as amusement. “And it’s terribly disrespectful of me to cheek someone of your wealth and standing.”

 

I made a low rumble at that. “Your sense of humour is a bit much at times, my lad.”

 

“I was deadly serious, my dear Dawson.” Basil’s face showed that he was indeed not joking. “The name Macavity means nothing to all save myself for the moment, but many of his associates – including the late unlamented Colonel Mabel – are known and feared in the very highest halls. Her Majesty is extremely pleased at your removal of such a national threat to her subjects. The knighthood she offers you is optional; the thousand guineas is not.”

 

If I thought I was flattened before I relearned how that felt. Knighthood? For a ragged Army doctor who spent half his time playing detective? “That poor mare deserves the knighthood after the way I scared her,” I said. “No, that is too much. Let Her Majesty confer that honour upon another.”

 

“I thought you would refuse it,” Basil said, stroking my cheek and smiling tenderly. “I ought to know my Dawson by now.”

 

But what held my thought now was the sheer mountain of gold I’d just acquired. Merely living off the interest would still make me a comfortable gentlemouse, I’d never have to scrounge for fees again, I could treat anyone without fear of their inability to pay, and – oh Providence bless and keep that foul murderess and count this as one good deed in her favour!

 

I almost sat up, and Basil hastily held me down. “Tell me, Doctor!” he said anxiously. “Tell me!”

 

“No no my dear I’m not in crisis,” I said as hastily, and kissed the nearest paw that held me. “No. But I do know what I can do with some of that money right now, as fast as possible.”

 

“You are doing nothing, David,” Basil said sternly, and kissed me now that I was clearly conscious. I kissed back – a bit weakly, but I’d been needing this since before my run-in with the Colonel. “Tell me what I must do…”

 

It cost less than four guineas, in total, to move Timothy Hodgson and his entire family to the park – the nursing queen-cat and her kits staying well away from the friends of the Catkiller whilst they escorted everyone and carried the invalid – and by the time I was well enough to visit them the lad was nearly recovered. His mother nursed her next litter atop the beautifully-knitted blanket that would no longer be needed as a shroud whilst I told the enthralled older children the story of my fight that day. If any doubted the truth, the tender stump at my tail-end and the three neat cat-claw scars down my back spoke louder than words.

 

Timothy got better, and grew up, and lived. Whenever I visited his own nest during my rounds in the park, his children would happily pester their dad to tell them the story all over again – the one about how his life had been saved by a cat! I always grinned at how that legacy would have horrified that deadly mouser Mabel, and that those she’d murdered could have asked for no greater vengeance.


End file.
